1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document editing apparatus for adding a page number, a watermark, a date, or the like to a document.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a printing technology called on-demand printing, print on demand (POD), or the like has come into widespread use. Such a printing technology is to print exactly the quantity a user needs, when he/she needs. Unlike conventional technologies in which printing is performed after a plate-making process, according to the on-demand printing, printing is performed by directly outputting digital data created by, for example, software for Desktop Publishing (DTP) to a digital printer.
Such a printing technology does not need large-scale equipment, the great number of processes, and a technical skill as compared with conventional printing technologies. Such a printing technology is advantageous in that the necessary number of printings can be easily performed for a short period of time when the need arises. Such a printing technology also has the advantage of flexibility since it enables variable data printing in which elements such as text and images are changed for each printed piece of paper.
For these reasons, not only professional printing businesses but also general businesses have recently been introducing and using an on-demand printing system employing a digital printer for the purpose of printing manuals, catalogs, or Direct Mails (DMs) on their own.
With on-demand printing, document editing software is generally used to create print data to be outputted to a digital printer. Such document editing software has a variety of functions to edit layouts and designs in a document for printing. The document editing software has a function, for example, to import document data such as text data or image data into print data, and a function to add a page number, a watermark, a date, or the like to each page in accordance with a command made by a user.
There is also provided a function to dynamically move a position at which a page number is to be added taking account of a biding position or a spreading direction of a resulting printed material (Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-317225).
In the meantime, it is sometimes a case where document editing software is used to add a page number, a watermark, a date, or the like (each of these elements is hereinafter referred to as a “page item”) to all of pages or predetermined pages collectively. In such a case, the page item may not be added to a page properly depending on the state of content on the page. To be specific, a page item and another element constituting a content on a page such as a text, an image, or a background are positioned one above the other; thereby the page item may not be properly visible on a resulting printed material.
To cope with this, according to conventional methods, a user has viewed a layout screen to check visually whether or not page items are added properly to all the pages. Then, if finding a page to which a page item is not properly added, the user deals with the found page, e.g., prevents the page item from being displayed, or changes the position at which the page item is added to another position.
In general, only a one-page range is displayed on the layout screen. Accordingly, the user has to view the indication for each page to check whether or not a page item has been added properly to each page. For example, the user has to check each page in the following manner.
Referring to FIG. 24, the user makes settings to add page numbers to headers or footers of all the pages (#1601). Then, the user makes operation to display the first page and confirms that the page number is added thereto properly (#1602). The user, then, makes operation to display the second page and confirms that the page number is added thereto properly (#1603). Further, the user makes operation to display the third page and confirms that the page number and an image are positioned one above the other (#1604). The user here determines that it is unnecessary to display a page item, i.e., the page number, on the third page because the third page constitutes only of the image as the content, so that the user changes the settings in such a manner that the page number is not displayed on the third page (#1605). After that, the user makes operation to display the fourth page and confirms that the page number is added thereto properly. In this way, the user is required to perform operation for checking whether or not the page number is added to each page properly. The large number of pages requires a large amount of labor to perform such checking on all the pages.
Unfortunately, conventional methods have a problem that it takes a large amount of time for a user to, in particular, add page items to pages in the overall workflow for document editing.
The use of the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-317225 does not enable a user to correct a state in which a page item and an element such as a text, an image, or a background constituting a content are positioned one above the other. Thus, the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-317225 does not overcome the problem discussed above.